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The Streets of Laredo
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On a summer day in 1908, the celebrated collector of folk songs, John Lomax, set up his strange Edison recording machine in the famous Buckhorn Saloon in San Antonio, Texas, seeking to record cowboy songs. He was advised by the proprietor that a Negro singer who ran a beer parlor in the red-light district near the Sourthern Pacific depot could supply him with a number of songs. The singer had been a cook in the cow camps during the great trail driving days and claimed to have worked for the Sam Bass outlaw gang at one time.
That afternoon Lomax located the beer parlor. The sign over the doorway read:
Bill Jack McCurry's
The Road to Rum
The song source himself was outside behind the saloon, braced up against a stunted mulberry tree, too drunk to sing. The persistent Lomax came back the next day lugging his crude equipment. McCurry felt better and recorded song after song. Among them was The Streets Of Laredo...
"O beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly;
Play the Dead March as you carry me along.
Take me to the green valley and lay the sod o'er me,
For I'm a young cowboy and I know I've done wrong."
"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy."
These words he did say as I boldly stepped by.
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story;
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die.
"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin;
Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall.
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
PUt roses to deadn the clods as they fall."
"Go gather around you a group of young cowboys,
And tell them the story of this my sad fate.
Tell one and the other, before they go further,
To stop their wild roving before it's too late."
"Go bring me a cup, a cup of cold water
To cool my parched lips," the young cowboy said.
Before I returned, the spirit had left him
And gone to its Maker -- the cowboy was dead.
We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly,
And bitterly wept as we bore him along.
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome,
We all loved our comrade although he'd done wrong.
I walked out in The Streets Of Laredo,
as I walked out in Laredo one day....
Note: Most MIDI
files are downloadable... ~ CLICK HERE ~!
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